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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.

John Cage

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John Cage
Age: 79 †
Born: 1912
Born: September 5
Died: 1992
Died: August 2
Composer
Illustrator
Music Theorist
Musician
Musicologist
Painter
Philosopher
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
LA
California
John Milton Cage Jr.
John Milton Cage
Jr.
John Milton
Jr. Cage
J. C.
Events
Preconception
Simply
Preconceptions
Actuality
Adjust
Error
Immediately
Errors
Failure

More quotes by John Cage

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Paper should be edible, nutritious. Inks used for printing or writing should have delicious flavors. Magazines or newspapers read at breakfast should be eaten for lunch. Instead of throwing one's mail in the waste-basket, it should be saved for the dinner guests.
John Cage
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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
John Cage
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Look at everything. Don't close your eyes to the world around you. Look and become curious and interested in what there is to see.
John Cage
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As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
John Cage
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We're breaking all of the rules, even our own rules, and how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.
John Cage
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Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it's own accord.
John Cage
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There will always be critics eager to fashion opinions for the lazy and incapable.
John Cage
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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
John Cage
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If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.
John Cage
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Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
John Cage
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All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
John Cage
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If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.
John Cage
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Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression free as a bird, Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, You know? They're not free: they're fighting over bits of food.
John Cage
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As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.
John Cage
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Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.
John Cage
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One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.
John Cage
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If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.
John Cage
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The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.
John Cage
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In the dark, all cats are black.
John Cage
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In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
John Cage